Dear Professor,
I gained enough skill to be paid to do public magic shows and play instruments for entertainment; I played in Carnegie Hall and was a competitive pro at multiple games.
I couldn't do that if I wasn't open to seeing my mistakes and using them to keep enhancing my skills.
I personally believe talent is overrated. You can have all the talent in the world, yet without hard work and endless commitment, you are just like everyone else.
The deeper question is, why do I have this obsession to push myself to near perfection when other people seem perfectly ok with coming in second or phoning in half-backed work?
It is pathological from being an orphan without family I sought praise from being the best at things. From the first time I stood in front of a group of people to read my poetry as a 7-year-old and had people captivated by my talents, the praise, the applause, the recognition, it was there as a shallow plug for my inner void where most people had the safety blanket of love and family.
I just have my goals.
Thus where, as most people going to a class it is a means to an end. I am suffering to be the greatest at everything I do. My talent is the only thing that matters; as I live and breathe, I have one thing left to achieve: be the greatest me ever, which means it doesn't matter if I am sick and tired, if I got no sleep for seven days straight, doesn't matter if I study till I cry, because at the end I have another A to add to my collection.
Another moment where I knew I did the best I could and that for one more moment, I proved to myself and someone judging me that my self-abuse of overwork was worth it because I impressed yet another person.
(name removed for the internet) , no one cares who I am or what I have to say. If they did, it would already be outlawed to have non-consenting genital mutilation on intersex children.
The treatment of orphans and poor children with talent but no support would be something our country better accounted for.
I had genius level tests in grade school when being tested for accommodations, yet did anyone care I grew up underprivileged, and when other students got to focus on college, I had to pull shifts at a local laundry mat and cleaning company of which both fired me for trying to teach the Spanish workers English and talking to them about labor rights in the state of New York as I would often go to sleep hungry and unloved.
If the deep reflection and honest answer of who I am is not the answer you seek a reflection for and what I think of the feedback here is a more typical answer to the question you asked.
Most of the students gave quite superficial feedback that had very little that was actionable. For the first speech, the main issue they had was my ADHD movement and need to move, so I addressed that by sitting for the following two speeches.
The second speeches main criticism were the lighting the poor biography and a weak ending.
As I noticed everything that was mentioned, I incorporated it to make the final presentation better. Was it perfect ? Actually, as mentioned, I still needed to get used to using citations in the manner it was for this class, so if I could do it again, would it be better?
Of course. Additionally I feel although I had a dynamic tone it was off putting to some students I think if I dialed it back 10 % it would have been just as impactful yet maybe reached more people?
It's hard to say because the topic is so important to me. The inflections are me harnessing my emotional truth, and when speaking from the heart, I was already working so hard to contain it.
I answered this question both ways.